Bonesha FM

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Last week, South
Sudanese Information Minister Michael Makuei warned reporters in the capital, Juba, not to interview the opposition
or face possible arrest or expulsion from the country. According to the
minister, a lawyer by profession, broadcast interviews with rebels by local
media are considered "hostile propaganda" and "in conflict with the law."

Nairobi, March 6, 2013--Burundian authorities today released Hassan Ruvakuki, a reporter who has been imprisoned for 16 monthson charges related to his interview with a rebel leader. The circumstances of the release were not immediately clear, and the Committee to Protect Journalists called on authorities to vacate Ruvakuki's conviction and prison sentence.

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On Tuesday, Burundi's press corps did what it has done for
the past three weeks: protest
the imprisonment of one of its own. Hassan Ruvakuki is a
reporter jailed since November 28, 2011 on anti-state charges; for the first
time, the journalists wore white t-shirts showing Ruvakuki in his green prison
uniform. But this time, the reaction by police caught journalists by surprise.

At 8 o'clock Tuesday morning roughly 50 Burundian
journalists silently marched
around the courthouses in the capital, Bujumbura, and the offices of the
justice minister, protesting the imprisonment
of their colleague, Hassan
Ruvakuki.

"They sentenced him to three years without following the
law," said Patrick Nduwimana, one of the protest organizers and the interim
director of local private radio station Bonesha
FM. A week earlier, on Tuesday, January 8, an appeals court in Burundi had sentenced
Ruvakuki, a reporter for Bonesha FM and the French government-backed Radio France Internationale, to
three years imprisonment for "working with a criminal group."

Nairobi, January 8,
2013--An appeals court in Burundi today dropped terrorism charges against
jailed journalist Hassan Ruvakuki and reduced his sentence from life to three
years in prison, according to local journalists and news reports.

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Nairobi, June 20,
2012--A Burundian appeals court must reverse the ruling against a
journalist sentenced to life in prison on vague terrorism charges, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

A High Court in the eastern town of Cankuzo today found Hassan Ruvakuki, a reporter for local radio station Bonesha FM and French government-funded broadcaster Radio France Internationale, and 13 other defendants guilty of "participating in terrorist attacks" under the country's penal code, Patrick Nduwimana, the interim director at Bonesha FM, told CPJ.